4 >Troubleshooting</TITLE
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40 >Privoxy Frequently Asked Questions</TH
78 >5. Troubleshooting</H1
86 >5.1. I am getting <SPAN
88 >"connection refused"</SPAN
90 with every web page?</H3
95 > is not running, or your
96 browser is configured for a different port than what
105 > 2.x versions (and also
110 default. This has been changed to port 8118 now, due to a conflict
111 with NAS (Network Audio Service), which uses port 8000. If you haven't,
112 you need to change your browser to the new port number, or alternately
114 HREF="../user-manual/config.html#LISTEN-ADDRESS"
125 HREF="../user-manual/config.html"
127 >main configuration file</A
137 >5.2. I just added a new rule, but the steenkin ad is
138 still getting through. How?</H3
140 > If the ad had been displayed before you added its URL, it will probably be
141 held in the browser's cache for some time, so it will be displayed without
142 the need for any request to the server, and <SPAN
146 will not be in the picture. The best thing to do is try flushing the browser's
147 caches. And then try again.</P
149 > If this doesn't help, you probably have an error in the rule you
150 applied. Try pasting the full URL of the offending ad into <A
151 HREF="http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info"
153 >http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info</A
155 and see if it really matches your new rule. Blocking ads is like blocking
156 spam: a lot of tinkering is required to stay ahead of the game.</P
165 >5.3. One of my favorite sites does not work with Privoxy.
168 > First verify that it is indeed a <SPAN
172 by toggling off <SPAN
176 HREF="http://config.privoxy.org/toggle"
178 >http://config.privoxy.org/toggle</A
180 and then shift-reloading the problem page (i.e. holding down the shift key
181 while clicking reload. Alternatively, flush your browser's disk and memory
184 > If still a problem, go to <A
185 HREF="http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info"
187 >http://config.privoxy.org/show-url-info</A
189 and paste the full URL of the page in question into the prompt. See which actions
190 are being applied to the URL, and which matches in which actions files are
191 responsible for that. Now, armed with this information, go to <A
192 HREF="http://config.privoxy.org/show-status"
194 >http://config.privoxy.org/show-status</A
196 and select the appropriate actions files for editing.</P
198 > You can now either look for a section which disables the actions that
199 you suspect to cause the problem and add a pattern for your site there,
200 or make up a completely new section for your site. In any case, the recommended
201 way is to disable only the prime suspect, reload the problem page, and only
202 if the problem persists, disable more and more actions until you have
203 identified the culprit. You may or may not want to turn the other actions
204 on again. Remember to flush your browser's caches in between any such changes!</P
206 > Alternately, if you are comfortable with a text editor, you can accomplish
207 the same thing by editing the appropriate actions file. Probably the easiest
208 way to deal with such problems when editing by hand is to add your
216 which is an alias that turns off most <SPAN
220 actions, but is also likely to turn off more actions then needed, and thus lower
221 your privacy and protection more than necessary, </P
223 > Troubleshooting actions is discussed in more detail in the <A
224 HREF="../user-manual/appendix.html#ACTIONSANAT"
226 >User Manual appendix,
227 Troubleshooting: the Anatomy of an Action</A
230 HREF="../user-manual/actions-file.html#ACT-EXAMPLES"
234 with general configuration information and examples.</P
243 >5.4. After installing Privoxy, I have to log in
244 every time I start IE. What gives?</H3
246 > This is a quirk that effects the installation of
250 >, in conjunction with Internet Explorer and
251 Internet Connection Sharing on Windows 2000 and Windows XP. The symptoms may
252 appear to be corrupted or invalid DUN settings, or passwords.</P
254 > When setting up an NT based Windows system with
258 > you may find that things do not seem to be
259 doing what you expect. When you set your system up you will probably have set
260 up Internet Connection Sharing (ICS) with Dial up Networking (DUN) when
261 logged in with administrator privileges. You will probably have made this DUN
262 connection available to other accounts that you may have set-up on your
263 system. E.g. Mum or Dad sets up the system and makes accounts suitably
264 configured for the kids.</P
266 > When setting up <SPAN
269 > in this environment you
270 will have to alter the proxy set-up of Internet Explorer (IE) for the
271 specific DUN connection on which you wish to use
275 >. When you do this the ICS DUN set-up
276 becomes user specific. In this instance you will see no difference if you
277 change the DUN connection under the account used to set-up the connection.
278 However when you do this from another user you will notice that the DUN
279 connection changes to make available to "Me only". You will also find that
280 you have to store the password under each different user!</P
282 > The reason for this is that each user's set-up for IE is user specific. Each
283 set-up DUN connection and each LAN connection in IE store the settings for
284 each user individually. As such this enforces individual configurations
285 rather than common ones. Hence the first time you use a DUN connection after
286 re-booting your system it may not perform as you expect, and prompt you for
287 the password. Just set and save the password again and all should be OK.</P
289 >[Thanks to Ray Griffith for this submission.]</P
298 >5.5. I cannot connect to any FTP sites. Privoxy
304 > cannot act as a proxy for FTP traffic,
305 so do not configure your browser to use <SPAN
309 as an FTP proxy. The same is true for <SPAN
313 >any protocol other than HTTP
319 > Most browsers understand FTP as well as HTTP. If you connect to a site, with
322 >ftp://ftp.example.com</TT
323 >, your browser is making
324 an FTP connection, and not a HTTP connection. So while your browser may
328 > does not, and cannot proxy
332 > To complicate matters, some systems may have a generic <SPAN
336 setting, which will silently enable various protocols, including
343 > HTTP and FTP proxying! So it is possible to
344 accidentally enable FTP proxying in these cases. And of course, if this
348 > will indeed cause problems since
349 it does not know FTP. Newer version will give a sane error
350 message if a FTP connection is attempted. Just disable the FTP setting
351 and all will be well again.
357 > ever proxy FTP traffic? Unlikely.
358 There just is not much reason, and the work to make this happen is more than
369 >5.6. In Mac OSX, I can't configure Microsoft Internet Explorer to use
370 Privoxy as the HTTP proxy.</H3
372 > Microsoft Internet Explorer (in versions like 5.1) respects system-wide
373 network settings. In order to change the HTTP proxy, open System
374 Preferences, and click on the Network icon. In the settings pane that
375 comes up, click on the Proxies tab. Ensure the "Web Proxy (HTTP)" checkbox
376 is checked and enter <TT
379 > in the entry field.
383 > in the Port field. The next time you start
384 IE, it should reflect these values.
394 >5.7. In Mac OSX, I dragged the Privoxy folder to the trash in order to
395 uninstall it. Now the finder tells me I don't have sufficient privileges to
398 > Just dragging the <SPAN
401 > folder to the trash is
402 not enough to delete it. <SPAN
408 >uninstall.command</SPAN
409 > file that takes care of
410 these details. Open the trash, drag the <SPAN
412 >uninstall.command</SPAN
414 file out of the trash and double-click on it. You will be prompted for
415 confirmation and the administration password.
418 > The trash may still appear full after this command; emptying the trash
419 from the desktop should make it appear empty again.
429 >5.8. In Mac OSX Panther (10.3), images often fail to load and/or I
430 experience random delays in page loading. I'm using
434 > as my browser's proxy setting.</H3
436 > We believe this is due to an IPv6-related bug in OSX, but don't fully
437 understand the issue yet. In any case, changing the proxy setting to
445 works around the problem.
455 >5.9. I get a completely blank page at one site. <SPAN
461 ><html><body></body></html></SPAN
463 Privoxy the page loads fine.</H3
465 > Chances are that the site suffers from a bug in
467 HREF="http://www.php.net/"
474 which results in empty pages being sent if the client explicitly requests
475 an uncompressed page, like <SPAN
479 This bug has been fixed in PHP 4.2.3.
482 > To find out if this is in fact the source of the problem, try adding
485 >-prevent-compression</TT
500 > # Make exceptions for ill-behaved sites:
502 {-prevent-compression}
508 > If that works, you may also want to report the problem to the
509 site's webmasters, telling them to use zlib.output_compression
510 instead of ob_gzhandler in their PHP applications (workaround)
511 or upgrade to PHP 4.2.3 or later (fix).
521 >5.10. Why am I getting a 503 Error (WSAECONNREFUSED) on every page?</H3
523 > More than likely this is a problem with your TCP/IP networking. ZoneAlarm has
524 been reported to cause this symptom -- even if not running. The solution is
525 to either fight the ZA configuration, or uninstall ZoneAlarm, and then find
526 something better behaved in its place. Other personal firewall type products
527 may cause similar type problems if not configured correctly.
537 >5.11. My logs show many <SPAN
539 >"Unable to get my own hostname"</SPAN
546 > tries to get the hostname of the system
547 its running on from the IP address of the system interface it is bound to
558 > setting). If the system cannot supply
559 this information, <SPAN
562 > logs this condition. </P
564 > Typically, this would be considered a minor system configuration error. It is
565 not a fatal error to <SPAN
569 result in a much slower response from <SPAN
573 some platforms due to DNS timeouts.</P
575 > This can be caused by a problem with the local <TT
579 file. If this file has been changed from the original, try reverting it to
580 see if that helps.</P
589 >5.12. When I try to launch Privoxy, I get an
592 >"port 8118 is already in use"</SPAN
593 > (or similar wording).
603 > port. Typically this message would mean that there
604 is already one instance of <SPAN
608 you are actually trying to start a second <SPAN
612 on the same port, which will not work. (You can have multiple instances but
613 they must be assigned different ports.) How and why this might happen varies
614 from platform to platform, but you need to check your installation and
615 start-up procedures.</P
624 >5.13. Pages with UTF-8 fonts are garbled.</H3
626 > This is caused by the <SPAN
629 > filter. You should either
633 >, or at least upgrade to the most
637 > file available from <A
638 HREF="http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=11118"
642 Or you can simply disable the demoronizer filter.</P
651 >5.14. Why are binary files (such as images) corrupted when Privoxy
654 > This may also be caused by the <SPAN
658 in conjunction with a web server that is misreporting a file type. Binary
659 files are exempted from <SPAN
663 (unless the web server by mistake says the file is something else). Either
667 >, or go to the most recent
671 > file available from <A
672 HREF="http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=11118"
684 >5.15. What is the <SPAN
687 > and why is it there?</H3
689 > The original demoronizer was a Perl script that cleaned up HTML pages which
690 were created with certain Microsoft products. MS has used proprietary extensions
691 to standardized font encodings (ISO 8859-1), which has caused problems for pages
692 that are viewed with non-Microsoft products (and are expecting to see a
693 standard set of fonts). The demoronizer corrected these errors so the pages
694 displayed correctly. <SPAN
698 script, introducing a filter based on the original demoronizer, which in turn could
699 correct these errors on the fly. </P
701 > But this is only needed in some situations, and will cause serious problems in some
704 > If you are using Microsoft products, you do not need it. If you need to view
705 pages with UTF-8 characters (such as Cyrillic or Chinese), then it will
706 cause corruption of the fonts, and thus <SPAN
714 > On the other hand, if you use non-Microsoft products, and you occasionally
715 notice wierd characters on pages, you might want to try it.</P
724 >5.16. Why do I keep seeing <SPAN
726 >"PrivoxyWindowOpen()"</SPAN
727 > in raw source code?</H3
732 > is attempting to disable malicious
734 HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Javascript"
738 in this case, with the <TT
740 >unsolicited-popups</TT
745 > cannot tell very well
749 > code snippets from <SPAN
754 > If you see this in HTML source, and the page displays without problems, then
755 this is good, and likely some pop-up window was disabled. If you see this
756 where it is causing a problem, such as a downloaded program source code file,
757 then you should set an exception for this site or page such that the
758 integrity of the page stays in tact by disabling all filtering.</P
767 >5.17. I am getting too many DNS errors like <SPAN
769 >"404 No Such Domain"</SPAN
771 can't Privoxy do this better?</H3
773 > There are potentially several factors here. First of all, the DNS resolution
774 is done by the underlying operating system -- not
782 merely initiates the process and hands it off, and then later reports
783 whatever the outcome was. And tries to give a coherent message if there seems
784 to be a problem. In some cases, this might otherwise be mitigated by the
785 browser itself which might try some work-arounds and alternate approaches (e.g
789 > to the URL). In other cases, if
793 > is being chained with another proxy, this
794 could complicate the issue, and cause undue
795 delays and timeouts. In the case of a <SPAN
799 server handles all the DNS. <SPAN
806 > which is reporting whatever problem occurred
807 downstream, and not the root cause of the error.</P
809 > In any case, v. 3.0.4 includes various improvements to help
813 > better handle these cases.</P
822 >5.18. At one site Privoxy just hangs, and starts taking
823 all CPU. Why is this?</H3
825 > This is probably a manifestation of the <SPAN
829 occurs on pages containing many (thousands upon thousands) of blank lines. The blank lines
830 are in the raw HTML source of the page, and the browser just ignores them. But the
831 pattern matching in <SPAN
835 mechanism is trying to match against absurdly long strings and this becomes
836 very CPU-intensive, taking a long, long time to complete. Until a better
837 solution comes along, disable filtering on these pages, particularly the
843 >unsolicited-popups</TT
854 >5.19. I just installed Privoxy, and all my
855 browsing has slowed to a crawl. What gives?</H3
857 > This should not happen, and for the overwhelming number of users world-wide,
858 it does not happen. I would suspect some inadvertent interaction of software
859 components such as anti-virus software, spyware protectors, personal
860 firewalls or similar components. Try disabling (or uninstalling) these one
861 at a time and see if that helps.</P
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